In the operation of a data network, devices linked through the network communicate data back and forth to each other. Some of the data communicated represents a message representing the status of a device on the network. The substance of such a message may indicate conditions such as a device may be inoperative, currently busy processing data, the device is free to receive new data, and the like. When communicated to other devices on the network, the devices receiving such a message may change their operation in response to the message.
This type of communication of messages between devices on a network represents a point-to-point communication system, where one message is effectively broadcasted to all of the devices on a network. In the case of a network having many devices, it is possible that a considerable amount of network bandwidth in consumed by the presence of status messages. Moreover, many of these status messages are not relevant for a number of devices on the network. Hence, these devices have to commit resources to filtering such non-relevant messages while having network bandwidth wasted due to the communication of such messages.
One approach for limiting the waste of bandwidth is to use a computer program such as a firewall that prohibits certain types of messages or data from entering into a local network from an outside connection. The devices' that are connected through the local network are then spared from having bandwidth consumed by non-relevant messages. The configuration of a firewall or other filtering/monitoring program typically requires a system administrator to manually configure a variety of rules for each device of a network. Therefore, a large amount of time is devoted to this manual configuration operation, whereby it becomes difficult for a system administrator to modify the operation of a system, without devoting a large amount of time to implement such changes.